


Disconnection

by Sebastienne



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:46:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sebastienne/pseuds/Sebastienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How can you connect in an age where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray?" - Jonathan Larson, RENT.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disconnection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elle Rouge](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Elle+Rouge).



Shilo liked the early mornings the best. Sure, it was a 24-hour city, there were always people around, but the crowds (which Shilo hated) were smallest in the hours when the harsh blue halogen glare of the streetlights was beginning to soften as the sun rose. She couldn't see the sun, of course, from street level; the buildings loomed in, with advertising holograms filling the space between them and rippling as she turned her head.

She passed a group of girls - aged maybe twelve, thirteen? - making their way home after a night out. They were demurely dressed, compared to some she'd seen; yes, their dresses were small, but at least these ones had no panels of clear plastic in strange places, like the ones that had startled her so much last week.

As she passed them, Shilo noticed that one girl had a row of sutures badly hidden in her hairline, and another was carrying her shoes, revealing angry pink scars from the bones she'd had removed to be able to wear them in the first place. She gazed just a little too intently and too long, drawing a sneer from the girl with the sutures. The stitching was a botch job; as she wrinkled her forehead in disgust, Shilo could see patches of raw flesh appearing around the edges of her face.

Still, though, her gaze was one of awe, and jealousy - these kids knew so much more about the world than she did. Living in her sterile bedroom, she'd missed so much - what was expected from her, now that she was no longer a sickly little girl? She had no idea.

Standing up straighter, faking a confidence she did not feel, Shilo followed the moving holographic faces which enticed her up some wide metal stairs to a dazzling glass frontage. Automatic doors parted in front of her, and she was hit by a noxious cloud of pheromones and alcohols.

The automatic doors opened onto a huge, high-ceilinged room filled with counters and kiosks, an escalator rising to meet a balcony that ran around the hall. As she began to take it all in, Shilo's first thought was that each counter was staffed by a sophisticated cyborg; they all seemed to be made to the same design, just in the uniforms of different companies. As she stepped closer, however, she realised that they were real women; the feeling of lifelessness came from the way that their faces, their hair, even their bodies, were so set and poised that they might have been cast in plastic. Given what some of them were selling, it seemed to Shilo that this may indeed be the case. Nose job? Jaw reshaping? Rib removal? Labial bleaching? Longer words that Shilo didn't even understand. Some stalls had video-loops running, showing before and after, never showing the process. It was hot, and noisy – but the cyborg-women who sneered and looked away were somehow worse than the ones who jostled for her attention, offering treatments at introductory prices - pay nothing now! The cyborg-women's faces, frozen in sneers and pleas, made her feel as sickly and broken as she had when she'd believed herself infected by her mother's genetics. She had no idea what to start with; it was becoming clear that she had so many flaws, so much that needed fixing, before she could exist out here in the real world. Her head spinning, nauseous from the overpowering smell of perfume, Shilo stumbled back out towards the street.

\- - - - -

Graverobber's world was full of fuck-ups and drop-outs and broken, broken people. But Shilo felt more at home amongst them than she ever could out there in the glare of halogen and hologram. After a while, she got used to the fact that her friends would go on week-long benders and come back with new faces or new body parts. She never did find out if Luka had intended to get those breast implants, but now they were as much a part of him as his six-fingered hands. It didn't seem to bother them that Shilo wasn't changing her body; and they were friends, of a sort, as long as the Zydrate kept coming. In fact, Shilo's uncut face made her seem so safe (or maybe invisible?) that she started running Zydrate to the places Graverobber couldn't go.

\- - - - -

A lonely childhood turned into an adolescence filled with isolation, and now a reclusive adulthood. Never a female role-model or friend, no-one to tell her how to be. No wonder Amber Sweet is so fucked up.

Shilo palmed Amber's cash, and handed over the vial of Zydrate, in one practiced movement. She was wearing the short white shift of a surgical nurse, the perfect cover for visiting Amber's rooms so often. Shilo recognised, now, the hungry look that consumed Amber's face as she snapped the vial into the gun. Even though she'd seen her friends do it a hundred times, there was something hypnotic in the way that Amber lay back, spread her legs, and used two probing fingers to find the artery at the top of her thigh. The taut little sigh she let out as she discharged the gun made Shilo feel she was intruding, even though Amber had clearly meant for her to see this; usually she would wait until Shilo had left, but something was obviously different today.

Shilo could have turned and gone – she had no more business here – but something in Amber's arching back and feral little moans kept her transfixed. Eventually, Amber sat up and smiled at Shilo. No, not a smile; a full-on cracked-out _grin_. She stood up – surprisingly steady on her gargantuan heels – and walked towards Shilo, never breaking eye-contact. The hunger in her smile, behind her dilated pupils, became apparent as she stepped closer. It made Shilo feel weak and uncertain, but she couldn't break the gaze. She licked her lips, went to speak, and was silent. Then, just for a moment, Shilo didn't feel uncomfortable at all; she felt welcomed, part of some secret joke she didn't quite understand yet. But Amber's gaze wavered, her eyes flicked down to the medical bag at Shilo's hip, and the hungry look was explained. There wasn't really any Zydrate there, it was just part of the costume, but Amber wasn't to know that. Shilo sighed quietly, inclined her head in a tired farewell, and left.


End file.
